


signed, sealed, delivered

by perennial



Category: You've Got Mail (1998)
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon, and then what happened, happy marrieds, second-person viewpoint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-11
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-05-05 02:58:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14607756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perennial/pseuds/perennial
Summary: Kathleen has an idea for a book. Joe has ideas for the title.or,A day in the life of Mr. and Mrs. Fox.





	signed, sealed, delivered

**Author's Note:**

> please note!!! as i hope the tags have made clear, this is NOT a kathleen/reader fic. the perspective is very much joe’s. i just wanted to experiment with POVs.

Kathleen says, “I think I’m going to write a book.”

You remind her that you know this. One of the perks of being Kathleen’s husband includes spending countless mealtimes listening to her brainstorm plotlines involving friendship, growing up, and anthropomorphic household items.

She shakes her head and you take a moment to admire the way the sun is shining down on her hair. She waves a french fry at no one in particular. “Not that one. This is a new idea. A book about us.”

“Well, that sounds… terrifying.”

“About how we met.”

“You mean about that time I wandered into your bookshop and you were enchanting and I was the most decent, honest, thoughtful guy in New York?” You spread your hands in the air as though viewing a marquee above the heads at the other tables. “ _I Married That Dick from the Bookstore_. Bestseller.”

She grins as she chews. “I was thinking something quaint and remarkably setting-specific, like... _The Shop Around the Corner_.”

“Cute, if heavily biased. You aren’t the only main character in this story, you know. In a similar vein, how about: _She Loves Me_.”

She snorts. “Don’t quit your day job, Fox.”

“Deal. I like my day job.” You like it a lot more since she’s come along, frankly. The entire Austen canon aside, Kathleen has a knack for matching books to people, and she’s fed you a steady diet of literature that has shifted your perspective on authors, readers, and the role of the middleman connecting one to the other. It’s astonishing how much more you enjoy the book business now that you’re reading books again.

She offers you the rest of her fries and tosses them to a nearby pigeon when you decline. You watch her zero in on the bird and then on the flock of birds who arrive to binge themselves on cold strips of fried potato. The wheels in her head are turning; she is mentally fitting this scene into the many plots spinning through her head, as though fitting a puzzle piece into the fuller picture. It’s fun to watch, then play mental memory tiles later when she reads you a version of the scene set in gnome caves and guess whether in this new scenario you’re the suave anthropomorphic lantern or the long-suffering leader gnome.

When her attention returns to you, you say, “What are you going to rename us? Did I tell you my mom wanted to name me Novack? She was the kind of person who liked first names that are last names, although I don’t think she wholly understood the concept.”

“I was almost named Amelia. As in Earhart. My mom was obsessed with the mystery. She was convinced Amelia crashed in tropical paradise and decided to stay, like _Cast Away_ except happy,” she says. You carefully store this information away in the arsenal of facts you have been collecting about Kathleen since the first time you ever spoke to her. She’s lived three decades of facts already, so you have some catching up to do, but you’re placing your bets on another five decades to do so. You’re collecting facts alongside her now, so you might actually stand a chance at clearing out the backlog. It’s amazing to imagine all the things you’ll know about her in fifty years compared to now. Sometimes you think about living five decades of life with her (you can still hardly believe you get even five minutes with her) and it makes you happy in a way that you haven’t figured out how to express without sounding totally loony.

“Will the bookstores still be bookstores? Maybe we could be competing parfumeries.”

“You know more about perfume than I do, Mr. ‘Know thy scent, know thyself’.”

“Oh, here’s a good one. Are you ready for this? This is great. _Incognito Infatuation_. Bestseller.”

“I’m cutting you off.” She takes away your water glass and waves for the bill.

The two of you wander down the sidewalk with fingers entwined. The sun shines down in pockets and pieces through the overarching trees and throws shifting patterns onto the concrete. “ _In the Good Old Summertime_ ,” you say. “Bestseller.”

“We met in the fall,” she points out. “And got together in the spring.”

“Striving for accuracy at all times. Got it.”

She closes her eyes and lifts her face to the sun. “What a beautiful day, hm? Would have been a perfect day for the boat.”

“Now, that,” you say, “is the fifth time you’ve suggested going out on the boat you previously claimed to hate.”

“Yes, well,” she says, “that was before I knew how fast it could go.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I love it.”

“How quickly we fall.”

At the florist she she dumps a bunch of sunflowers in your arms and hands you a pot of impatiens before going over to inspect the daisies. You hold a bouquet of red tulips up to your neck. “ _Beauty and the Bookstore Murderer_.”

“That reminds me. Do you want to take Annabel to see Beauty and the Beast for her birthday?”

You raise an expressive eyebrow.

“I know,” she says, “but she loves Broadway and we love her and sometimes love means suffering through five reprises of ‘Be Our Guest’ sung by hysterically happy dancing housewares.”

“I cannot _wait_ until she’s old enough to see Spamalot,” you say. Kathleen hands you another bundle of daisies. “That’s three,” you tell her.

“I know,” she says, as though wondering why you’re pointing it out. “So about this book.”

“Yes,” you say. “ _A Tale of Two Penpals_.”

“You’re going to have to be the villain for a while.”

“I see. Because some might consider me the villain.”

“Because you were the villain.”

“Some might consider.”

“I think I’m going to start a little ways in. After we’re already cyber-friends, right when Fox Books shows up on the street like a ravenous wolf from a dream that no one knows is really a nightmare.”

“As any good monster business does.”

“And then wrap it up in the park.”

“Oh wait wait wait wait wait,” you say. “Wrap with the proposal.”

“Nobody cares about what happens after the park. They just want to see us get together.”

“ _I_ care! Your readers have pretty poor taste if they’re satisfied with Riverside when the _proposal_ —”

“Was a beautiful thing and it’s just mine. The readers get the park. The proposal is all for me.” She tucks her hand in the miniscule gap of your arm that isn’t filled with flowers and smiles up at you, that big happiest Kathleen smile that is the reason your heart beats, and you smile down at her and overpay the florist by twenty dollars.

Back at the brownstone, you gargle and spit out blue mouthwash. “ _How Shopgirl Met NY152…_ ” you call into the bedroom.

“Har— _har_!” You can hear her doing the funny jumpy dance she does when trying to zip up the back of her dress on her own.

You walk out of the bathroom, towel still in hand, and cross the room to where she stands, having given up on the dress and shifted her attention to putting in a pair of multi-colored glittery earrings that aren’t quite her style but were a gift from Birdie. You pull the zipper up to her neckline.

“But did you hear the ellipses?”

“Loud and clear. No one could have missed them.” She looks at herself in the mirror. “Earrings, shoes, purse, flowers.”

“I put the flowers on top of the fridge. Brinkley was trying to eat them.”

“Earrings, shoes… purse…” She ducks into the closet and reappears just as quickly with sandals in hand. “Flowers, husband… Joe, look at me. Do you look okay?”

“You’re going to get a blister if you wear those shoes.”

“Oh, that’s right! I hate these shoes!”

“Wear the ones with the strappy twisty thing.”

“Yes, good. Good!” She vanishes into the closet again. She calls, slightly muffled, “You know, it’s a good thing I keep you around.”

“I’d like to see you try to get rid of me, honey. But I’ll remind you of those words the next time the ice cream is gone.”

“Ice cream!” she shouts. “We forgot to get seven-layer dip!”

Since you’re running late you take a taxi that drops you in front of an ancient tenement building. Kathleen presses the button for 3E and the door lock clicks. Your wife climbs the stairs ahead of you and you admire her bare legs. The door to Christina’s apartment is cracked open and there is a sign on it that says FIRE ESCAPE, and you both walk through the living room to the window that is yawning wide. You scramble out first and then give a hand to your wife. She climbs the stairs ahead of you and for the first ten steps you admire the way the cloth of her sundress sways over her rear end and for the last sixty-odd you mentally calculate how much it would cost to install an elevator in Christina’s apartment building. The fire escape spits you out on the roof, which has been transformed into a twinkle-lit landscape of Chinese-lantern cheer.

The group assembled there hails you happily. Kathleen makes a beeline for Christina to hug her and give her the sunflowers and exclaim hellos at the huddle of women around her. You wave to the assembly and let Birdie take the seven-layer dip out of your hands and shake hands with Christina’s boyfriend whose name you can never remember and George and a few others you know. You circle around to Christina to wish her happy birthday and give her a one-armed hug so as not to crush the flowers. Kevin is playing bartender for the evening; he hands you a unnamed cocktail and says, “Trust me.”

You catch up with Kevin, which doesn’t take long since you log more hours with Kevin on a weekly basis than you do with your entire family combined, then locate a golden head talking to George and Birdie and Christina’s boyfriend and wander back that way.

They are discussing the upcoming solar eclipse. George says, “I wanted total blackness.”

Kathleen tells you, “George is crushed. His whole weekend is ruined.”

“What I thought would happen was, I would go outside and it would be light, and then for thirty seconds it would be totally black and the only way we would be able to see anything was the lights from the buildings, and then it would get light again and I would go inside.”

Birdie says, “And instead you're going to go blind.”

You mutter to Kathleen, “ _Eclipse of the Bookshop: How to Survive the Death of Your Business and Find Love at the Same Time: The Kathleen Fox Story_.” She casts you the look that means she wants to both laugh and punch you.

The party is fun enough to stay late, and is still going strong even at its official close; the two of you bow out of the invitation to go clubbing with Christina and some of the others, though both Kevin and Birdie accept. You take a taxi home and watch the neon lights of the never-sleeping city rush past, your hand curled in your wife’s.

The clock flips to 11:11 right as you walk through the door. “Make a wish,” Kathleen yawns. She tugs off her shoes and you unzip her dress and she goes into the bathroom. You take Brinkley outside and turn off all the lamps and turn on the ceiling fan. You pull on an old white t-shirt and wash your face and brush your teeth.

Kathleen is already in bed, her tousled hair fanned across the pillow. You curl your body against hers. She settles against you with a contented sigh. You nuzzle her neck and whisper, “ _Lies and Predicates_.”

“Stop,” she laughs.

You smile and kiss her neck. You relax into your pillow and you can smell her hair and she is warm against you and you breathe slow and sink into sleep.

Morning is bright and airy and sunlit. She’s opened the bedroom windows and a breeze billows out the curtains; you can hear the shouts of children playing in the street and the cars honking at them to scram.

You walk into the kitchen. She eyes you over the rim of her mug.

“ _You’ve Got Mail_ ,” you say triumphantly.

She squints at you. “Huh.”

“Huh what?”

“Huh like, I like it, but will people know what that means in fifty years? Or even fifteen?”

“What do you mean will people know? Of course they’ll know. Where’s AOL going? Nowhere. They’ve got a corner on the market.”

“It’s clever, but I still like _The Shop Around the Corner_.”

You say, “I bet you’ll change your mind.”

*

“I think I’m going to write a book.”

“What is known as pregnancy brain,” you say, a remark that earns you an elbow in the ribs.

“About my mom. Set in an enchanted bookshop. All the books are sentient, and they have conversations with the people in the shop.”

“Oh!”

“No. You aren’t naming this one.”

“But—”

“This one is _The Shop Around the Corner_ , that’s final.”

“Or! Just listen. _Or_ , it’s called _The Storybook Lady vs. the Big Bad Fox_. Hey? Right? Hey?”

“You don’t get to name the baby. Just FYI.”

“Oh, come on.”

“You’ve had a good run. It’s over.”

“It’s a great title!”

“I’m naming both the baby and the book after the next person to serve me curly fries. You think I’m kidding but I’m not!”

“ _Tyrese Around the Corner_ , bestseller. Not quite the same ring to it. Tyrese Novack Fox. Now there’s a keeper.”

She says, “Curly. Fries.”

It takes nine blocks to find the Ty’s Fries food cart. You stand beside her, watching in admiration as she downs the contents of the entire container in two minutes.

“The baby’s name is Daisy, of course,” you say.

Her eyes well up. You were expecting this. She dabs her eyes with the napkin you hand her.

“And if it’s a boy?”

“We just settled that. But this one will be a girl. Daisy Brinkley Fox.”

She halts; from her frozen body comes a choking laugh. Shaking her head, she turns to the food cart and says, “Another, please.” You wish you had clocked the first round because you’re pretty sure she beats her time with the second.

The two of you commence walking, one of her hands resting on her belly, the other linked with yours. The city seems to have turned yellow and orange overnight. There are mums and pumpkins on door stoops. Her scarf is burgundy red. You think about the baby you’ll someday send off to school with a backpack full of sharpened pencils and your heart is so warm and full you can hardly breathe.

“ _The Storybook Lady_?” Kathleen says.

“ _Versus the Big Bad Fox_. Instant bestseller.”

“Well,” she says, “stranger things have happened.”

And you have to agree.


End file.
